Welcome, Neighbor!

About Me

I am a Ph.D. student at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. I study the History of Biblical Interpretation, which includes Jewish and Christian interpretations of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. My interests are religion, politics, TV, movies, and reading.

Tuesday, February 20, 2018

Dave Carder. Anatomy of an Affair: How Affairs, Attractions and Addictions Develop, and How to Guard Your Marriage Against Them. Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2008, 2017. See here to buy the book.

Dave Carder is a pastor and counselor. He has degrees in psychology from Wayne State University and the University of Toledo.

Anatomy of an Affair covers a variety of issues. First,
there is the question of how adulterous affairs can develop: what people
are missing in their marriages when they commit adultery, and what they
are looking for. Carder discusses different kinds of affairs, and he
also addresses apparent puzzles, such as the question of why many who
commit adultery do so with someone who is unlike their spouse. Carder
provides exercises that can assist a married couple in taking the
temperature of its marriage. Second, there is the question of how a
married couple can recover from adultery. The book has exercises on
steps that a couple can take in forgiveness and in adding spice to its
marriage. Third, there is the question of what motivates the “other
woman” or the “other man,” as well as sex addiction. Often, they are
attempting to cope with their own feelings of insecurity and inadequacy,
even trauma in some cases.

The book is filled with real-life case studies. A lot of them
followed a predictable pattern, but some of them had distinct details.
There was one sad story about a woman who was given to her grandparents
when she was a child, and her parents lived right next door, raising her
brothers and sisters; as a result, she felt unwanted.

Much of the book is probably common-sense, but, for a lot of people,
that common sense needs to be put into accessible words: they are hungry
for a repertoire that they can draw on as they seek to avoid adultery,
or to move on from adultery. This book provides that in an empathetic
and practical manner, while suggesting resources that readers can
consult.

In terms of critiques, I have two. First, on page 107, Carder
appears to recommend that married couples have occasional sex in an
“unconventional place” to add spice to their marriage. Couples should
keep in mind, however, that sex in a public place is illegal in several
places and may have dire legal consequences.

Second, many have criticized the “Billy Graham Rule” (the rule that a
married man should not be alone in a room with a woman who is not his
wife) for discouraging Platonic friendships between men and women, and
even for holding women back professionally. Carder addressed these
issues tangentially, but he could have done so more than he did: how can
one avoid the risks that Carder highlights, without unfairly preventing
women from advancing professionally due to a lack of networking
opportunities, or opportunities to interact with men professionally?

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher. My review is honest.

Monday, February 19, 2018

For church last Sunday, I attended the Missouri-Synod Lutheran
church, its Sunday school class on patristic interpretations of John,
and the “Pen” church.

Because the Lutheran service and the Pen church’s service overlapped
in theme, I will consider them first and second, respectively, before
discussing the Sunday school class.

A. The pastor at the Lutheran service talked about the hole in our
hearts that only God can fill, according to Augustine, but that we
futilely look to other people or things to fill. What can heal us of
this? Can we simply stop sinning? The pastor said that we cannot. If
we discipline ourselves in one area, we find three other areas in which
we are looking to sin to fill our hearts. What is the solution? The
pastor said that the solution rests in God’s love.

I was wondering if he was going in a Tim Keller-sort of direction.
Tim Keller often gave sermons about how we seek to root our identity in
things other than God, with disappointing results. For Keller, we
cannot simply decide to stop doing that and to start doing the right
thing. The solution rested in Jesus’ self-sacrificial love for us, and,
the more that is real to us, the more we will rest in his love.

I am sure that both pastors believe that the Holy Spirit’s work
within the heart has to be involved in this conversion process, in some
manner. Sometimes, though, one can get the impression from sermons like
these that Jesus’ act on the cross inspires people to respond with love
towards God, like a moral-influence view of the atonement. Does it,
though? I can believe that Jesus died on the cross and rose again;
believing I am a beneficiary of that, to be honest, can be more
difficult, for do I have the proper faith, or do I repent correctly, or
are the salvific benefits of Jesus’ death somehow contingent on my
forgiveness of others? Those who have assurance that they are children
of God—-and Romans 8:16 speaks of the Spirit testifying within believers
that they are such—-would probably be able to rest better in and to
build their identity on God’s love for them.

The pastor also said that he does not want us to leave the service
asking ourselves what we can do for Jesus. Rather, he wants us to
reflect on how Jesus invites us to be with him and to learn from him.
That is an interesting thought: the disciples got to be around Jesus and
to hear from his wisdom. Imagine people today being able to do so,
either in reality or pretend: to walk with Jesus, either hearing from
him, or asking oneself what Jesus might say in such-and-such a
situation.

B. The pastor at the “Pen” church also spoke about God’s love. He
said that many are like Simon Peter in Luke 5:8, after Jesus caused
Peter’s boat to be filled with fish: Peter asked Jesus to depart from
him, for Peter was a sinful man! They cannot believe that God has a
purpose for them because they have been and are sinful. Whereas God
wants them to have an identity in God, which entails abundant life,
Satan tries to steal that identity (John 10:10). The pastor shared that
this was true of his own grandfather, who died in that state.

According to Psalm 139, the pastor shared, God loves us deeply and
has a purpose for us. God designed us in our intricacies, down to the
smallest level.

C. What stood out to me in the Sunday school class was the questions that the congregants asked.

—-We were reading patristic interpretations of John 6, which concerns
eating Christ’s flesh and drinking his blood. Many church fathers
applied that to the Eucharist. Some seemed to go so far as to suggest
that partaking of the Eucharist was necessary to receive eternal life. A
lady in the audience had a problem with that: she said we are saved by
faith alone; similarly, last week, a man said that communion was part of
sanctification, not justification. Interestingly, in the sermon, the
pastor was telling about a shut-in who did not want the pastor to bring
communion because she did not feel that she was a sinner: she was
shut-in, after all, so what opportunity did she have to sin? Is the
implication that forgiveness of sins somehow relates to communion? In
any case, the teacher talked about how faith is more than cognitive: it
is trusting in God, even when things do not make sense, and faith is
what leads one to understanding. We trust, he said, that we ingest
Christ when we take communion, even if it looks like bread and wine; we
trust that the Holy Spirit speaks through the pastor.

—-Another lady was saying that she disagreed with Christians who
claim that all human beings have an eternal spirit inside of them, for
she believes that people receive immortality only through Christ, and
through belief in him. I did not know if she was espousing conditional
immortality here: the doctrine that only the saved live forever, whereas
the un-saved are destroyed. The teacher defined death as destruction
and as eternal separation from God, and he probably believes that all
have an immortal soul, including the un-saved. Back when I was a
teenager, going through the Ambassador College (Worldwide Church of God)
Correspondence Courses, I encountered the view that Martin Luther
rejected the immortality of the soul and embraced soul sleep. That
claim is still around, but I found this article to be a balanced assessment of it, and of Luther’s comments about the state of the dead.

—-The physical and the spiritual were salient topics in this session
of the class. According to some of the fathers we read, Jesus in John 6
was contrasting ordinary bread, which brings physical and temporal
nourishment and life, with Jesus (and, perhaps, the bread of the
Eucharist) as bread, which brings eternal life. And yet, the teacher
was saying that, according to the fathers, God meets us in the physical,
which would include the elements of the Eucharist, and even the written
words and verbal proclamation of Scripture. The teacher also said that
Jesus has a physical body—-a glorified body, and yet a body of flesh.
Someone in the class was curious about the definition of physical and
non-physical. His question reminded me of my Armstrongite heritage,
which held that Jesus rose with a spiritual body. Of course, people can
ask: are not “spiritual” and “body” contradictory concepts? Does not
spiritual mean non-corporeal? But, in ancient times, was that
necessarily the case? Did not the gods have bodies of some sort, in
ancient pagan belief? Then there is the issue of Jesus in the New
Testament shining like the sun (Revelation 1:6; see also Matthew 17:2;
Acts 26:13), which Gnostic literature liked to stress: is that
consistent with Jesus’ resurrected body being spiritual, or physical,
albeit a glorified physical?

Friday, February 16, 2018

Andrew David Naselli. No Quick Fix: Where Higher Life Theology Came From, What It Is, and Why It’s Harmful. Lexham Press, 2017. See here to purchase the book.

Andrew David Naselli has two Ph.D.’s: one from Bob Jones University,
and another from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He teaches New
Testament and Theology at Bethlehem College and Seminary, which is in
Minneapolis. He wrote a dissertation about the Keswick movement, which
he revised as a book for Lexham press: Let Go and Let God? A Survey and Analysis of Keswick Theology. No Quick Fix is a shorter book about the same topic and is more accessible to lay readers.

What is the “Higher Life Theology” that Naselli is criticizing?
Higher Life Theology posits that there are two kinds of Christian
believers, both of whom are saved: there are carnal Christians, who are
habitual sinners and are not fully yielded to God, and there are
spiritual Christians, who are yielded to God and are filled with the
Holy Spirit. At a dramatic moment of decision sometime after his or her
conversion, a Christian may decide to yield to God in surrender and to
become filled the Holy Spirit. This results in a great spiritual
transformation, as the believer becomes liberated from sinful tendencies
and attracted to righteousness; it also entails receiving spiritual
power to do God’s work. While obedience to God can set the stage for
this intense moment, the transformation comes, not through actively
working for it, but through “letting go and letting God”: trusting and
allowing God to do the work of transformation. Practically speaking,
according to Naselli, many who have this kind of experience find that
their spiritual batteries eventually run low and they feel a need to
attend a Keswick conference where they can have the experience again.

What are Naselli’s problems with Higher Life Theology? He has a
variety of them. For one, he does not acknowledge any distinction
between carnal and spiritual Christians. All true Christians bear
spiritual fruit, to varying degrees, and this commences when they are
saved, not at a later point in time. Second, Naselli disagrees with the
passivity that Higher Life Theology encourages. According to Naselli,
the New Testament does not teach believers to passively wait for God to
transform them but encourages them to live out actively who they are as
Christians: to mortify sinful desires and to perform works of
righteousness. On the basis of John 15, Naselli defines the believer
abiding in Christ as walking in Christ’s commandments, and Christ
abiding in the believer as Christ’s words dwelling in the believer; this
entails activity, not passivity, on the part of the believer. Third,
Naselli believes that Higher Life Theology overlaps with Pelagianism,
which he states “exalts a human’s autonomous free will and inherent
ability to obey any of God’s commands apart from God’s help” (page 84).
How can this be, when Higher Life Theology encourages the believer to
let God do the work of spiritual transformation? For Naselli, Higher
Life Theology is Pelagian in that it emphasizes that the believer can
make a decision on his or her own to surrender to God, to plug into the
Holy Spirit, and to become transformed. The correct view, according to
Naselli, is that God is the one who creates the faith and the will in
the believer to obey God and to do good works.

Fourth, Naselli contends that Higher Life Theology sets believers up
for spiritual discouragement. They have a dramatic religious moment and
expect things to be smooth sailing for them spiritually after that, but
this does not happen. They may conclude that they did not truly
surrender everything to God, or they may even redefine sin, lowering the
bar to where they are, to defend the authenticity of their religious
experience. Naselli discusses his own negative experience with Higher
Life Theology and his recovery from it. He also mentions evangelical
luminaries who have had similar struggles with it, including J.I.
Packer. And, in an epilogue, John MacArthur, Jr. shares his own
struggle with it back when he was a young Christian.

The book discusses the historical roots and development of Higher
Life Theology, as its roots came from a variety of sources (i.e.,
Methodism, Pentecostalism, dispensationalism, etc.). He talks about key
figures associated with the movement, including D.L. Moody and Hanna
Smith, the author of The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life.
Naselli refers to the high points of the movement: for instance, Moody
was impressed when a cantankerous Christian attended a Keswick
conference and became sweeter and more loving afterwards. But Naselli
also mentions the lows: Hanna Smith’s husband Robert was sexually
immoral and became an agnostic, and Hanna became (by Naselli’s and many
conservative Christians’ standard) a heretic.

To his credit, Naselli attempts to account for those who have had
positive spiritual experiences with Higher Life Theology, without
dismissing their experiences. For Naselli, sanctification can entail
times of rapid growth spurts, and that may be what they are
experiencing. Naselli also acknowledges that believers becoming aware
of their dependence on God’s Spirit for sanctification (which the
Keswick movement encourages, albeit in an incorrect manner, as far as
Naselli is concerned) is a positive development.

The book is informative. Naselli does not systematically lay out his
view of sanctification in one setting, but he does refer to it, and he
supports it Scripturally, when he attempts to refute Higher Life
Theology. Naselli not only demonstrates that there are New Testament
passages that affirm that believers must actively fight sinful desires
and do good works, but he also seeks to unpack the meaning of the
concept of being filled with the Holy Spirit. He presents different
interpretive options concerning Ephesians 5:18, and he concludes that it
means being influenced by the Holy Spirit and being indwelt by the
words of Christ, which can exist at varying degrees. Yet,
unfortunately, Naselli does not address the concept as it appears in the
Book of Acts. Naselli’s discussion of how some commands in Scripture
entail varying degrees of obedience, and how one can always improve
one’s obedience of those commands, was an interesting insight.

There are spiritually inspiring statements in the book, from those
Naselli seeks to refute, from himself, and from those Naselli cites for
support. Regarding Higher Life Theology, there is an appeal to letting
go and letting God, as opposed to climbing uphill in an attempt to
become better. And Naselli favorably cited a powerful comment by Jerry
Bridges in his appendix of Christian resource that he considers helpful:
“Your worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God’s grace. And your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God’s grace.”

It was ironic, from my standpoint, that MacArthur narrated his
spiritual struggles with Higher Life Theology, considering that his
Lordship Salvation beliefs gave me my own share of spiritual struggles
and disappointment. I continually wondered if my life was spiritual or
holy enough to be a sign of the Holy Spirit’s work in me, and if I could
even follow Christ’s commands. Naselli may have done well to have
addressed the question of what professing or nominal Christians can do
if they find that sin is great in their life and question whether they
are truly Christians.

Finally, it stood out to me that, in listing spiritual exercises that
believers can do to assist their sanctification, there was no reference
in the book to accountability from fellow believers or fellowship.
There was a brief reference to church discipline, in an attempt to
refute the idea that there are carnal Christians. But, considering that
accountability is emphasized in evangelicalism today, its extremely
rare occurrence in the book was salient.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher. My review is honest.

Thursday, February 15, 2018

I attended the Ash Wednesday service at the Missouri-Synod Lutheran
church. My plan, for the next several weeks, is to attend the church’s
weekly Lenten services, followed by the Maundy Thursday and Good Friday
services. And, yes, I hope to do a blog post about each one of them, as
a way for me to process the service and to preserve it for myself and
anyone interested.

The pastor opened his sermon by referring to an old car commercial,
depicting a car that went through various terrain. The slogan was,
“It’s not about the destination, but the journey.”

The pastor said that the journey is indeed important, but so is the
destination. He told a story about when he was in Hawaii with other
Lutherans, and his group wanted to see a waterfall. The directions were
not clear, so his group was trying to find the waterfall. They were
walking on what they thought was a trail—-for a while, they were trying
to convince themselves that it was a trail—-but it was not. They were
lost, and they did not reach their destination.

The pastor applied this to repentance. Whereas the directions to the
waterfall were not clear, God has laid out God’s instructions.

The pastor got onto the topic of godly verses ungodly repentance. II
Corinthians 7:9-10 refers to godly repentance, but, according to the
pastor, it also seems to imply that there is such a thing as ungodly
repentance. What is ungodly repentance?

The pastor defined ungodly repentance as repentance that is
superficial and does not accompany or lead to an authentic change of
mind—-which encompasses more than intellectual thoughts but also
includes moral decision-making.

The pastor told a story to illustrate ungodly repentance. The pastor
was trying to get to an elders’ meeting at a Lutheran church where he
was serving, and he went way over the speed limit. A cop stopped him,
and the pastor told the cop that he was trying to get to an elders’
meeting; the pastor was wearing his collar, so he hoped that the cop
would go easy on a clergy-person. It turned out that the cop was a
lapsed Lutheran. The cop remarked that his grandmother went to that
Lutheran church, and he should be going, too, but he never does. The
cop decided to let the pastor off in an attempt to get right with God.

There were two things wrong with this cop’s repentance, the pastor
related. First, it did not lead to any change on the cop’s part: it was
not as if the cop started attending the church! But, second, the cop
was trying to solve the problem of his alienation from God on his own.
According to the pastor, he was like Adam and Eve in the Garden: rather
than turning to God, he was trying to be God, assuming autonomy.

What is true repentance? According to the pastor, it entails being
challenged by God’s law and asking God to be merciful to us, sinners
(Luke 18:13). It includes dying to a desire for sin. It entails
wanting oneself to decrease while Jesus increases (John 3:30).

But, the pastor said, even this focuses on us. For the pastor, we
are helpless to save ourselves. Many of us, when confronted with our
transgression of God’s law, may become resentful rather than repentant.

The pastor then talked about how God grieves for our sin. The pastor
detected God’s grief at Adam and Eve’s sin when God in Genesis 3 asked
them where they were and who told them that they were naked. It was
manifest when Jesus asked God to forgive his persecutors, for they know
not what they do (Luke 22:34).

These were the highlights of the sermon, as I recall them. I could
identify with what the pastor said about resenting God’s law: I often
feel that God’s law (as I understand it) is the problem because it is
too high of a standard, one that I, and very few people, can reach. But
I wondered how the pastor envisions God healing our attitudes. Is it
through an act of monergism, of God unilaterally transforming our hard
heart?

We sang different songs, but one that particularly ministered to me
was an old Lutheran hymn called “Today Your Mercy Calls Us.” You can
read its lyrics here. The hymn is worth reading because it illustrates the meaning of forgiveness and highlights God’s love:

Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Isaiah’s Daughter is biblical fiction that is set in the
time of Kings Ahaz and Hezekiah of Judah. Ishma and Yaira are refugees
from the invasion of Judah by Northern Israel and Syria in the eighth
century B.C.E. (II Kings 16-17; Isaiah 7). Ishma is adopted by the
prophet Isaiah. She is friends with Prince Hezekiah, with whom she
attends school, which Isaiah teaches. Ishma and Hezekiah eventually
marry, and her name is changed to Hephzibah, or Zibah, for short. The
book goes from Ahaz’s idolatrous, cruel reign, through key events of
Hezekiah’s reign (i.e., his fight against the Philistines, the Passover
celebration, the Assyrians’ attempted invasion of Jerusalem, and
Hezekiah’s sickness), to the birth of Hezekiah’s son, Manasseh. It does
not include the Babylonians’ visit of Jerusalem.

Here are some thoughts about this book:

A. Naturally, I compared this book with Lynn Austin’s Chronicles of the Kings
series, which covers the same time period. There were similarities
between the two works: a child sacrifice scene, and Hephzibah’s
discouragement at not being able to give birth. Some similarities may
be due to the authors’ common insights into biblical history or what
biblical passages say: Lachish is depicted as rather idolatrous in both
works, and both works depict Isaiah applying promises to Zion to
Hephzibah personally, which is not too surprising, considering that
Hephzinah’s name appears in Isaiah 62:4. But there were also clear
differences between the two works. Hezekiah’s mother Abijah is a
righteous martyr in Austin’s work, whereas she is a conniving queen and
queen-mother in Andrews’ narration. Shebna is an atheist in Austin’s
series, but merely a self-serving know-it-all in Andrews’ book.

B. In terms of which telling is better, both have their advantages.
Austin did better in laying out the characters’ motivations. Andrews,
however, had a more sophisticated, deeper writing-style. That made the
book rather slow for the first half, but the book came alive in the
second half.

C. Both tellings highlight the complexity of biblical
interpretation, albeit in different ways. Austin’s work concerned
interpretation of the Torah and the different conclusions that this
could yield. Andrews, by contrast, focused more on the prophecies of
Isaiah.

D. Austin’s work tended to assume a Christian interpretation of
Isaiah’s prophecies, treating them as about the far off future and in
reference to Jesus Christ. Andrews, by contrast, seemed more sensitive
to historical-critical interpretations, which interpret the Book of
Isaiah in light of its own historical contexts. The characters wonder
if Isaiah’s prophecies relate to their own day, and, while their
eventual conclusion is that several of them relate to the future, they
still maintain that they may have at least a partial application to
their own time. Hezekiah wonders continually if he is the anointed
Davidic king who will preside over eschatological peace and prosperity.
And, drawing from an article by Margaret Barker, Andrews contends that
Hezekiah’s sickness, on some level, fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah 53
about the servant suffering for people’s sins. Like a number of
conservatives, Andrews apparently treats the prophet Isaiah as the
author of Isaiah 53, whereas many scholars would associate that section
with an exilic or post-exilic author. Still, her sensitivity towards
interpreting Isaiah in reference to the time of Hezekiah is intriguing
and refreshing.

E. There were some hints of Christianity in the book, some more
warranted than others. Andrews interprets Isaiah 7:14 as a virgin
birth, and, in attempting to discern if the prophecy is being fulfilled
in their own time, characters wonder if a specific character is a
virgin. This is somewhat warranted, as conservative scholars have
argued that “virgin” is a possible meaning of the Hebrew word “almah,”
as they are distinguished from queens and concubines in Song of Solomon
6:8. At the same time, the word may simply mean young woman, as “alam”
means “young man” in I Samuel 17:56 and 20:22. In another passage in
the book, there is a statement that offering a lamb can atone for sins.
The stress on the sacrificial victim being a lamb is obviously
Christian, since Christians believe that Jesus was the lamb of God.
Throughout the Hebrew Bible, however, a variety of domesticated animals
are offered for sins.

F. In Austin’s work, Hezekiah and Isaiah largely seemed to be on the
same page: both are pious men, seeking to do God’s will. By contrast,
Andrews emphasizes the clash between Isaiah and Hezekiah. Hezekiah is
practical and seeks an alliance with Egypt, which Isaiah lambastes, and
even walks naked through town to protest. Hezekiah tries to build a
water tunnel to help Jerusalem in times of siege, but Isaiah deems that
to display a lack of trust in God (see Isaiah 22:11), as well as a
violation of the sanctity of Gihon (which Andrews seems to base on
Nathan’s anointing of Solomon there in I Kings 1). Andrews even
presents Hezekiah and Isaiah clashing in ways that the Bible does not:
when Hezekiah allows Levites to sacrifice and Israelites to eat the
Passover without being purified (II Chronicles 29-30), Isaiah is
outraged, seeing that as a violation of the Torah; Isaiah acknowledges
that this is his opinion, though, not a word from God, as his other
prophecies were. Although Isaiah and Hezekiah make peace eventually,
the tensions between their two positions are never fully resolved.
Hezekiah rejects Egypt’s gifts of scarabs, seeing them as idolatrous,
yet Egypt still helps Judah when the Assyrians invade. Hezekiah
proceeds to build the tunnel. When Isaiah instructs Hezekiah to put a
lump of figs on his boil (Isaiah 38:21) to recover, Hezekiah wryly asks
if Isaiah is telling him to help God out, rather than trusting God
completely, as Isaiah usually exhorts Hezekiah to do. The tension
between practicality and trusting God remains unresolved in this book.

G. Hephzibah was not always easy to understand. She could
sympathetically and empathetically comprehend why women would want to
worship Asherah, yet she was practically a religious zealot in expunging
Asherah worship from the harem. Still, the book was somewhat
believable in depicting her religious journey: she gained strength as
she reflected on Isaiah’s words in a season of solitude.

H. One scene was particularly intriguing. Biblical scholar Brian
Beckham argues that a biblical author in Isaiah 37 criticizes Isaiah’s
prophecies by placing Isaiah’s words in the mouth of the taunting
Rabshakeh. Andrews actually attempts to do something with this idea:
Hezekiah suspects that Isaiah has communicated with the Assyrians. By
the way, that was in character for Hezekiah, as far as this book is
concerned. Although one might expect Hezekiah to have more faith in his
former teacher, Hezekiah could get rather suspicious and paranoid in
this book.

I. Andrews, to her credit, acknowledged nuance among pagan views,
rather than lumping them all together. She narrates, for instance, that
the Assyrians were not too keen on human sacrifice.

J. On page 373, we read: “When one of God’s prophecies doesn’t come
to pass, it’s not because He failed; it’s because we misunderstood it.”
How would that be reconciled with Deuteronomy 18:22, which states that a
prophet is false if his words fail to come to pass? If one can explain
away non-fulfillment, does that not undermine Deuteronomy 18:22, in
some manner?

I am giving this book five stars, because it was engaging. I
appreciated its sensitivity towards historical-criticism and the
differences between Hezekiah and Isaiah.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Blogging for Books. My review is honest.

Monday, February 12, 2018

For church last Sunday, I attended the Missouri Synod Lutheran
church, its Sunday school class on patristic interpretations of the
Gospel of John, and the “Pen” church.

Here are some summaries, followed by links:

A. At the Missouri Synod Lutheran church, we were celebrating
Transfiguration Sunday. The youth pastor and the pastor were both
discussing Christology. They said that Jesus as a human being on earth
was still divine, but he was hiding his divinity from people; the youth
pastor suggested that this was because a premature revelation of Jesus’
divinity would anger people and they would put him to death before his
time. According to the youth pastor and the pastor, Jesus showed Peter,
James, and John his divinity at the Transfiguration. The pastor
likened that to the Eucharist: the Eucharist looks like a simple meal,
if it can even be called a meal, for it is not enough food to fill one
up. But divinity accompanies the elements of the Eucharist. The pastor
also talked about God being present in the seemingly mundane things of
life.

Similarly, at the Sunday school class, the teacher was saying that
Jesus hid his divine nature in becoming fully human. Jesus still drew
from it in doing miracles, however.

Some links:

A while back, I wrote a blog post about J.R. Daniel Kirk’s A Man Attested by God,
in which Kirk argues that the synoptic Gospels do not depict Jesus as
pre-existent or ontologically divine when he was on earth. The post is here,
in case you want to read it. Unfortunately, I did not refer to Kirk’s
discussion of the Transfiguration. If my memory is correct, Kirk argued
that, at the Transfiguration, Jesus was showing Peter, James, and John
the glory that he would have after his resurrection, not any ontological
divinity that he possessed.

Regarding Jesus doing miracles through his inherent divine nature, I
referred in my Church Write-Up last week to passages in which Jesus does
miracles through the power of his Father or the Holy Spirit (Matthew
12:28; John 5:31-38; 14:10; Acts 10:38); I noted, however, John 2:19, in
which Jesus seems to affirm that he has the power to resurrect himself
from the dead. Here
is that post, if you want to read it. I wondered if there were ancient
Christian thinkers, after the time of the New Testament, who
acknowledged that Jesus performed miracles through the power of the
Father or the Holy Spirit, as opposed to drawing on his own divine
nature. I do not have an encyclopedic knowledge of patristics, but, in
my post here
a while back, I discussed the debate between Theodoret and Cyril of
Alexandria: Cyril thought Jesus did miracles through his own divine
nature, whereas Theodoret said Jesus performed them through the
empowering of the Holy Spirit.

B. The Sunday school class talked a lot about the “real presence” of
Christ in the Eucharist. We were reading patristic sermons about John
6, in which Jesus talks about how eating his flesh and drinking his
blood brings a person eternal life. The sermons we were reading applied
that, at least in part, to the elements of the Eucharist. An elderly
woman then asked, “In light of this, why do Reformed people teach that
the bread and the wine are merely symbols for Christ’s body and blood?”

The teacher replied that the teaching that the bread and the wine are
merely symbolic originated after the sixteenth century, whereas, before
then, the widespread Christian position was that Christ was actually
present in the bread and the wine. He stated that the Catholics, the
Lutherans, the Anglicans, and the Orthodox are very similar on the
Eucharist. Luther differed slightly from the Catholics, the teacher
said, in that the Catholics believed that the bread and the wine
literally became the body and blood of Christ, whereas Luther thought
that, on some level, they remained bread and wine, even though they were
connected to the spiritual.

The class then talked about what the church did to leftover elements
of the Eucharist. One practice that some Lutheran churches perform is
to send the wine back to the earth. That reminded me of what my Grandpa
did when our family observed the Lord’s supper every year: he would
burn the leftover matzos. We did not believe in the “real presence” but
saw the Lord’s supper as commemorative, but my Grandpa’s idea was that
the bread was holy and could only be used for holy purposes.

My understanding is that Zwingli believed that the bread and the wine
of communion were symbolic, and Zwingli lived during, not after, the
sixteenth century. Still, I wondered if the belief in the real presence
was the universal belief until the Reformation.

Here are some links, some more scholarly than others:

In this post, Nathan Busenitz, whose book Long Before Luther I wrote about here,
cites patristic statements that he believes support the view that the
elements of the Eucharist are symbolic and commemorative; he states that
Catholic apologists misunderstand the patristic passages that appear to
support a “real presence” in the elements of the Eucharist. Meanwhile,
some Catholics in the comments section accuse him of misunderstanding.
And this Catholic article
trots out patristic statements, from many of the same people whom
Busenitz cites, that appears to support Christ’s “real presence” in the
Eucharist. Could the reality be that they believed in both/and, or does
one view preclude the other?

I wondered if the Waldensians of the twelfth-thirteenth centuries
believed in the “real presence.” The reason that they came to mind was
due to my Armstrongite heritage, which depicted them as part of the
“true church” in the medieval era. What I found was different people
saying different things. Here and here, one can read the view that the Waldensians rejected transubstantiation. Here, one can read the view that they believed in it.

Another comment on this issue: I think that, in John 6, eating
Christ’s flesh and drinking his blood relates to believing in Jesus and
coming to him, not so much the Eucharist. I believe that on the basis
of v 35: “And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that
cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never
thirst.” But I can understand that other Christians interpret eating
Christ’s flesh and drinking his blood in John 6 in light of New
Testament passages about the Lord’s supper, which call the bread Jesus’
body and the wine his blood (Matthew 26:26-28; Mark 14:22-24; Luke
22:19-20; I Corinthians 10:16; 11:24-27).

A question: Does the Missouri Synod believe that communion services
that do not believe in the “real presence” can still contain the “real
presence” and be legitimate communion services?

C. At the “Pen” church, the pastor preached about abiding love. His
focus was on marriage and romance. He said that there are three Greek
words for love: eros is romantic and sexual love; phileo is a friendly
love that contains give-and-take but can break down under pressure;
agape is self-sacrificial love that is concerned about the well-being of
the other person. The pastor said that we practice agape when we grasp
God’s love towards us: that God will stay with us and will never
leave. That way, we are filled, and our love spills out towards
others. Many of us, by contrast, run on empty and the slightest thing
can set us off.

Some links and thoughts:

Many evangelical preachers, writers, and laypeople assume that there
is a difference between phileo and agape, when, in reality, they were
often used interchangeably. See my post here.
Still, I appreciate what the pastor was saying. There are
relationships out there that are give-and-take. There are relationships
out there that are brittle. Hopefully, there are also relationships
out there that are solid, and disinterested love is a real thing.

I recalled a sermon that a United Methodist pastor preached about
three years ago, about the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke
10:25-37). He said that the man who asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?”,
did not necessarily have sinister motives. He was just wondering
something: did he have to pour out agape love on every single person, or
could he do so with a few select people? I have heard Christians
casually say that we are supposed to “love everybody,” but can we? Can
we truly have a selfless, sacrificial, giving love towards everyone,
even everyone we know? Would we not naturally show that love to some
over others? On the other hand, I am not suggesting that we should only
love our friends and family and forget about the outside world.
Anyway, I wrote about that sermon here, and you can read there my other thoughts about that sermon.

Finally, can I believe in God’s unconditional love for me? That is
difficult. I can try, but, before long, some Christian will come along
and say or imply that God loves me if I behave, or that I cannot use
God’s love as cover for sinning, or not forgiving, or not loving my
neighbor. Then there are biblical passages about God leaving those who
deny or forsake him (II Chronicles 15:2; II Timothy 2:12). And yet, the
Bible is a record of God’s faithfulness: God provides for Adam and Eve
after their sin; God is faithful to disobedient Israel; Christ dies for
people while they are yet sinners.

Saturday, February 10, 2018

Greg Belliveau. Seeds: Meditations on Grace in a World with Teeth. CrossLink, 2017. See here to buy the book.

The back cover of this book says that it is “In the vein of Donald
Miller, Anne Lamott, Debbie Blue, Brennan Manning, and other
contemporary narrative writers[.]” Of those authors on that list, I
have only read Donald Miller and Brennan Manning. Based on that, I
would say that this description captures the genre of the book quite
well. To that list, I would add Madeleine L’Engle’s non-fiction work
and Rachel Held Evans’ books.

The book is slender, at 75 pages. Perhaps it would have been more
satisfying had it been longer. At the same time, what it did have was
quite inspiring. The prose was eloquent. The insights were thoughtful
and honest. The stories were moving. The back cover says that the
author was a Christy Award finalist, and that is no surprise to me.

Among the themes that are in this book are:

—-How many of us look to success as a way to mask our awareness of
the suffering that is in the world, and that we fear will happen to us;

—-Recapturing our wonder at life and nature, whether things go our way or not;

—-The oddness of Jesus;

—-Grace;

—-The story of a man who was not the sharpest tool in the shed but
had a faith that entailed praying for others; he died of cancer, but he
influenced the author;

—-How many of us become callous in this world (this chapter was pretty convicting!);

—-How a person can lose everything, and that becomes the soil for a new birth, which impacts others in a positive way;

—-And how many of us, legitimately, are afraid of honest community.

A lot of these points may seem to be obvious or banal, but, trust me,
the author explores them in a refreshing manner. His insights capture
the fears that many of us have, fears that are not baseless but are
often rooted in our existence in a world of pain, suffering, loss, and
death. He points to God as a source of hope. He uncovers our
insecurities, which hamper our connection with people. And his stories
have a sense of innocence, as they convey a simple, yet profound, faith.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher through BookCrash. My review is honest.